Tuesday, 1 March 2011

Public health officials love to tell us all how their studies show we're heading for an early date with a brass handled wooden box, but perhaps they should instead seriously consider researching the risks attached to choosing health hectoring as a career.

Dr. Richard Daines, the state Commissioner of Health during the Paterson administration from 2007-2010, died Feb. 26 at age 60.

Dr. Daines left a legacy as a fervent supporter of the public health of New Yorkers—whether or not New Yorkers wanted to grapple with their obesity, smoking habits and soda addictions. He championed the fight for a tax on sugary beverages, taking to You Tube to graphically educate New Yorkers about the dangers of obesity and the empty calories in soda.

Not a great advert for their health recommendations, is it? Still, at least Dr Daines scrambled past the 60 mark, unlike others one could mention.

Considering the story of the day, perhaps insurance companies should think about offering favourable terms to public health miserabilists wishing to take out pension plans.

Just seen Charlie Brooker's "How TV Ruined Your Life." Obviously I remember all the "Millennium Bug" nonsense (and again, most members of the public saw straight through it straightaway) but I remember it as a vague thing people talked about - not a big deal. He did show footage I'd completely forgotten about though, of the usual healthist suspects saying, "This is a grave danger. There will unfortunately be deaths."

Of course, the Millenium Bug had a deadline so we could all wake up on Jan 1st and think, "As I suspected. Nothing happened." Shame there's no deadline to AGW or passive smoking. That said, someone should show a clip of these wankers warning about deaths from the Millenium Bug, catastrophic 10%+ of population deaths from bird flu, the same for swine flu etc etc to our politicians. Then maybe they'd realise these people are deranged hypochondriacs with a morbid fear of death and a passive hatred of life (or at least, what makes life worth living).

These things happen all the time. We should not be surprised when a health addict dies prematurely. The reason is that 'prematurely' is no more or less than an average, statistical figure. In terms of any individual, there is no such thing as 'prematurely'. You peg out when you peg out.

Having said that, we would not want our water supply to be contaminated, and that is what Public Health exists for - to avoid such things.

The idea of 'Public Health' has been hijacked. 'Public Health' has become the means whereby citizens can be persecuted.

""Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics for the British Medical Association, said: "We have to start de-normalising alcohol.""

Who are the 'we'?, one might ask. And is it right that the taxpayer is subsidising this 'we'?

But I want them to carry on with it for a while. I want the Drinking Community to realise that they too are being persecuted. Much as they annoy me, I want to see more and more and more health scares in the MSM until the situation becomes intolerable to The People. We know that this is possible from Climategate.

The "Millenium Bug" was a genuine problem, but in actuality it was probably some orders of magnitude smaller than it was predicted to be.

There were two main culprits in the hype, the media - who didn't understand it because it was technical and they aren't - and a certain number of less scrupulous IT consultancies who saw it as "a nice little earner".

In reality, most IT people examined the problem well in advance of the turn of the century and fixed any problems that they found - hence the whole "damp squib" of nobody being killed by renegade medical equipment, aeroplanes failing to fall from the skies, etc. :-)